America’s Lawyer E38: The United States and Germany are now escalating the conflict in Ukraine by sending Tanks to the country. We’ll explain why this development is NOT something to celebrate. A Republican senator has introduced a bill called the Pelosi Act that would ban members of Congress from owning and selling stocks. And Democrats are growing more concerned about Biden’s age as he prepares to announce his 2024 plans. All that, and more is coming up, so don’t go anywhere – America’s Lawyer starts right now.

Transcript:

*This transcript was generated by a third-party transcription software company, so please excuse any typos.

Mike Papantonio: Hi, I’m Mike Papantonio and this is America’s Lawyer. The United States and Germany are now escalating the conflict in Ukraine by sending tanks to the country. We’ll talk about how disastrous that can be in just a minute. A Republican senator has introduced a bill called the Pelosi Act that would ban members of Congress from owning and selling stocks, insider trading is what they’re trying to stop. And Democrats, well, they’re growing more concerned about Biden’s age as he prepares to announce his 2024 plans. All that and more, it’s coming up. Don’t go anywhere. America’s Lawyer starts right now.

American and German tanks are now headed to the Ukraine, a sign that this conflict is going to escalate without question, in a very dangerous way. Ring of Fire’s Farron Cousins joins me now to talk about this. Farron, you know, MSNBC, CNN, they’re high fiving. Oh, this is great. We’re sending in more tanks. And then Zelensky we just talked about now says, well, I don’t just want your tanks. I want some long range bombers basically saying, we’re gonna go bomb Moscow. And Biden, oh, Jesus Christ. It’s almost like he’s asleep at the wheel as this thing creeps towards World War III.

Farron Cousins: We’re, we’re at the point now where we’ve got pretty much all of the NATO countries that are sending tanks to Ukraine. US and Germany were kind of the last holdouts. So now we’ve joined in, we’re sending them heavy artillery. And the day, as you pointed out, the day after, the day after this was announced, we’re gonna send planes, Zelensky came out and said, next, I will be asking for war planes. So this, this is not going away, this is getting worse.

Mike Papantonio: War planes being the, he wants long range bombers.

Farron Cousins: Yeah.

Mike Papantonio: Because he’s gonna say, well, by God, we’re gonna start a war with Moscow. We’re gonna go to Moscow. Stall, you know, we’re, we’re gonna bomb ’em. And it’s almost as if they have put Biden in a stupid room. Okay. Biden is sitting there, 80 years old in his stupid room. And all these war hawks are saying, do this, do that. He comes out and says, I’m doing everything I can to avoid World War III. That’s, that was his talking point. There will not be a World War III. This thing is escalating at a, at a pace where anybody watching this who says, you just don’t understand. No, I frigging understand. I’ve seen it before, but not on this scale.

Farron Cousins: Right.

Mike Papantonio: This is scary as hell to me. I’ll tell you.

Farron Cousins: It, it is. And look, everybody, look, we understand Russia was the aggressor here. Russia started this.

Mike Papantonio: Of course.

Farron Cousins: Ukraine was the victim. We’re not trying to downplay any of that. But the point here is that we’re, we’re a hair’s breath away from putting boots on the ground because Ukraine has already said, hey, it’s probably gonna take us several months to even learn how to use these tanks.

Mike Papantonio: Oh, it’s gonna take a year, Farron.

Farron Cousins: Which, which means we’re gonna end up sending our guys to go over there and train them, which at that point, we have boots on the ground.

Mike Papantonio: They can’t drive ’em. And the, this experts say it’d be a year before they can. They can’t fix ’em. They can’t repair ’em. There’s nothing they can do with these other than the fact to poke the bear a little bit more and then have this idiot Zelensky, who I think is, we have made him into a hero and the guy is not a hero.

Farron Cousins: Well, and, and one of the, you know, a great anti-war activist, the name escapes me at the moment, but I’m sorry, they pointed out this is exactly Vietnam.

Mike Papantonio: Of course it is.

Farron Cousins: This is Vietnam, this is what we did.

Mike Papantonio: Of course.

Farron Cousins: Slowly marching and then quicker marching, and then suddenly we’re there and we have no idea what we’re doing, why we’re doing it. And, and we’re heading back into that same quagmire.

Mike Papantonio: You know what really, if, if people understand how this started, most people don’t even understand how it started. They, I swear to God, if you ask 10 people what brought this about, they have no idea. All they know is Russia invaded Ukraine, Russia the aggressor comes into Ukraine. Look at the history. It was all about NATO. Putin was telling Obama, even back to the Obama administration, he said a couple things. This deal that we have where you can’t move missiles any closer to our boundaries, you’re gonna stick with it. He didn’t stick with it. Obama moves ’em closer. The next discussion is, don’t go bringing all these people into NATO when they’re right at our border because you’re surrounding us right now. The worst thing about this, 26 million Russians died in World War II at the hands of Germans. Okay. Hitler’s Nazis killed 26 million Russian soldiers, no, people, civilians, soldiers, everybody.

Farron Cousins: Yeah.

Mike Papantonio: So Russia is looking at this, well, it’s Germany again. And now Germany is latched on to the United States. This is so scary to me, Farron. I, I just don’t know why people just, this thing, oh, well, it’s the human, it’s the right thing to do. Really?

Farron Cousins: No. The, the right thing to do is a diplomatic solution.

Mike Papantonio: Of course.

Farron Cousins: But listen to this, okay. You’ve got, this is the advisor to the Ukrainian president, Mykhailo Podolyak, who says, internal escalation of war in Russia is inevitable. Cities that are pampered, lazy, they, that thought they lived in a different reality, such as Moscow, St. Petersburg, will be subject to strikes. Various blows will be debt to, dealt to various targets. Why, by whom and what for? That’s another question.

Mike Papantonio: Now who can.

Farron Cousins: You’re threatened, you’re now threatening to bomb Russian cities. Those Russian citizens, they’re not a part of this. They’re innocent bystanders too and, and they’re threatening it right now.

Mike Papantonio: Yeah. I mean, if, if for to, you know, I don’t even want to hear, well, you don’t understand. No, I frigging understand. I have followed this since the minute it started. Most people don’t understand what even started it. They don’t understand the connection to NATO. They don’t understand that even Zelensky was saying, hush, hush about NATO, because all you’re doing is you’re aggravating Russia and you’re turning up that heat. And ultimately that’s what happened. Biden let it happen. Obama let it happen. Trump let it happen. And now this is where we are. And we are this close. What are, what was a 90 second, what are we?

Farron Cousins: 90 seconds on the Doomsday clock. Yeah.

Mike Papantonio: Doomsday. Well, what, what great timing. What does that put us around April or May?

Republican Senator Josh Hawley has introduced a bill called the Pelosi Act to bar members of Congress from owning stock. Really what it’s about is we have Congress has been, you know, they’ve had this free ride to, to engage in insider trading. Pelosi expert, her, her old man has made like millions and millions trading on inside information that came directly from the information that she had. Pick it up.

Farron Cousins: Yeah, exactly. So Hawley, you know, he tries to take a shot at Pelosi by naming it the Pelosi Act. But in reality, it’s actually a good bill.

Mike Papantonio: Yeah.

Farron Cousins: I’ll give ’em full credit for that. We have to ban the trading of stocks. You and I have stood here and we have talked, we’ve gone through the full list of the Republicans and the Democrats that are doing this and obviously Pelosi is one of the most visible people. But it’s, it’s a bipartisan thing. They’re all doing it. And, and when they get caught, the worst that can happen is they have to pay a $200 fine.

Mike Papantonio: $200 fine.

Farron Cousins: Like, that’s the penalty for insider trading.

Mike Papantonio: Okay. Let me tell you how crazy it is. If a congress, congressman is in committee and they are engaged in an investigation that’s closed door, they’re taking the in, like the chip. Let’s talk about the chip. This is, you know, this was, this was, everybody found out about it finally. But this is where you had Pelosi’s husband that was taking this information and trading on it because he knew that government was getting ready to put a ton of money into that, into that business, right?

Farron Cousins: Yeah, exactly. That, I mean, that is exactly what happened. The government wanted computer chips made here in the United States. Paul Pelosi owned stock in offshore computer chip manufacturers. He finds out about this. He dumps all that stock. Couple days later, Congress announces what they’re gonna do. It, it’s no different and, and we also see it one, with the defense industry. Huge.

Mike Papantonio: Oh, good God.

Farron Cousins: Because they know, okay, we’ve got this budget here that is not yet public. We know 20 billion is going to Raytheon, 80 billion is going to Northrop Grumman. So I’m gonna go buy these stocks now because they’re gonna go through the roof when the budget’s announced.

Mike Papantonio: Okay. So one way they get information is at the hearings.

Farron Cousins: Yeah.

Mike Papantonio: Okay. They’re there, they’re engaged in the hearings. The other way they get the information is from the lobbyists who are telling them, this is the amount of money we’re putting to push into this.

Farron Cousins: Yeah.

Mike Papantonio: Okay. They kind of get it at that point. All their pals are there on K Street and they come off of K Street, said, we’re really gonna push this one. Well, okay, well, I guess it’s time for me to invest. Nobody goes to jail. You know, they’re, the American, average American citizen if they did that, even the dysfunctional Department of Justice would go after that person. But they let them go with a $200 fine.

Farron Cousins: If, if they even enact the fine, which they very rarely do even when it is so blatant that this is taking place.

Mike Papantonio: Jesus.

A new report’s found that eating a single freshwater fish is the same as drinking dangerous PFAS chemicals. Okay. First of all, most people don’t know what PFAS is. You, do you agree with that?

Farron Cousins: Oh, absolutely.

Mike Papantonio: It’s been knocking around out there. We tried the first case, the first time PFAS ever got into the public domain were the trials that I had up in West Virginia. They made two movies out of it. One was called The Devil We Know, it’s on Netflix. The other one was about the lawyer who brought the case to me, brilliant lawyer, named Rob, Rob Bilott. It’s called Dark Waters. Begin by watching those movies to understand how bad this is. Okay. PFAS is so dangerous that, if you take one drop, one drop, put it in an Olympic size pool, it’s going to have the propensity to cause the physical problems that the, that we’re talking about. Which are what?

Farron Cousins: We’re talking about neurological problems, cancers of every imaginable kind for the individuals, birth defects. And, and the big problem here too, and you’ve discussed this plenty of times, is that it’s bioaccumulative.

Mike Papantonio: Mm-hmm.

Farron Cousins: Which means once it gets in you, it’s in you. So every PFAS chemical you drink after that is just compiling and building up inside your system.

Mike Papantonio: And explain why it’s in fish. Explain why it’s in our drinking water. Talk about that.

Farron Cousins: Exactly. It’s, it’s the waste from these massive corporations that have been dumping it for decades. Our, our EPA right now still doesn’t know exactly if we’re gonna stop this because it’s still happening. They’re still debating on what the proper limits are, but there’s no limit.

Mike Papantonio: 50 years. 50 years the EPA has known that PFAS, the first cases we tried was C8. It was a type of PFAS. So, so we found the documents, the EPA understood that all of the rat studies were a disaster. All of the beagle studies, they all died. All the monkey studies, they all died. And it was caused by this stuff that is in our drinking water right now. The second phase of this case that we’re handling right now is all these drinking water facilities. The, the delivery facilities. They have so much PFAS in their water it would take a hundred to $200 million per facility to get it out of the water.

Farron Cousins: And so now what we’re looking at, this new study from the Environmental Working Group says, one freshwater fish, just one, if you were to eat that right now for lunch, that’s the equivalent of drinking nothing but PFAS basically for an entire month, one fish. And these freshwater fish they’re talking about, these supply foods to, to communities. They’re a huge source of food for low income Americans who always bear the brunt of all of these environmental toxins.

Mike Papantonio: Mm-hmm.

Farron Cousins: Native populations. All of these groups heavily dependent on these fish. And we’re finding out now we’re poisoning you even faster than the rest of us are being poisoned. Because everybody’s getting it, but they’re getting it worse.

Mike Papantonio: You wanna know how it happened? You know what came out in the trial? Okay. It’s 3M and DuPont were the big, big folks in this. They did all this testing. They saw that all the tests were a disaster causing kidney cancer, causing testicular cancer, causing neurological problems, causing birth defects. All of this information they had. Now for a little while, they hid it from the EPA. But then at some point they handed it over to the EPA. EPA did nothing. They, they, there was nothing that was done by the EPA. All right. Working Groups, Environmental Working Groups gave it to the media. Don’t you think, this was like, this was 40 years ago. Don’t you think this is an important story New York Times? Don’t you think this is important Washington Post?

Farron Cousins: It should be.

Mike Papantonio: No, it wasn’t because obviously advertising money was moving into those entities. Television wouldn’t do it. 3M, check your TVs, 3M advertisers like crazy people. So even the, even the so-called investigative corporate types weren’t doing anything on this project. Then regulators, we found out that the regulators that were supposed to be in charge of all this were moving from, from being regulators to going to work for 3M in million dollar jobs or DuPont, going to work, going from regulation to DuPont. It was this revolving door and it went the other way. People who worked for the industry was put, they were putting people in, in administrative positions with the EPA to slow it all down. And, and, and Farron, I swear God, if you say, isn’t that PFA, PFAS a problem to 10 people, if you get one of them to even understand it’s in their body. It’s in their drinking water. They don’t get it.

Farron Cousins: No. It, it’s, what is it at least 98% of all life on Earth at this point?

Mike Papantonio: Yes.

Farron Cousins: Has PFAS chemicals in it.

Mike Papantonio: Polar bears have it. It’s so bad that they had to find blood that they could do epidemiology studies with. They, they couldn’t find it with contemporaries. They had to go to the soldiers that were in Korea to look at their blood samples to even be able to compare because they didn’t have it in their blood because it hadn’t started then.

Pfizer’s spending big money to control online media. Boy, they have succeeded haven’t they? Talk about this, would you.

Farron Cousins: This, this is an amazing story by this group Lever News, Andrew Perez. And, and by the way, Lever News is actually emerging as a very good anti-corporate news source here. But what they’ve.

Mike Papantonio: Tell, tell the viewers about that so they’ll have a source to go.

Farron Cousins: Yeah. It’s, it’s, it’s levernews.com. Again, huge. David Sirota writes for it, Andrew Perez, a lot of folks, you know, we’ve talked about over the years. But what they’ve found here, they’ve been doing the digging and they’ve found that Pfizer is out here sponsoring all kinds of different online media outlets. They’ve got a event coming up this week that they’re sponsoring for The Hill. And what they’re doing is paying to have their articles in addition to, you know, the big money behind it, go out there to the public saying, oh, look at what a good company Pfizer is. As they’re, as they do every January, raising the prices on hundreds of prescription drugs in America, simply because they can. But they’ve got these articles out here that they paid for saying, we give so much money to charity. We’re on the forefront of cutting edge medical technology. It’s a sham and they’re paying for it.

Mike Papantonio: Let me tell you where it gets really weird. They write the articles.

Farron Cousins: Yeah.

Mike Papantonio: They do the television production. They give it to MSNBC, they give it to CNN. They give it to the corporate networks and they just run it. Why? Because Pfizer is advertising every, every nine minutes on MSNBC or CNN. So they just take this packaged crap that’s produced by Pfizer and it’s all, well, we’re, we’re a wonderful corporation. They don’t talk about the hundreds of lawsuits that have been brought against them for fraud, for creating dangerous drugs. They don’t talk about any of that. They, they say, okay, if you said it, it must be true. And oh, by the way, could you spend another $10 million with us this year advertising Pfizer?

Farron Cousins: And, and what we see now, because you know, you’re talking a lot about the, the corporate media, which they’ve been in for years. And now they’ve realized we’ve seen the success on the corporate media, on the daytime television especially, it’s bad. And now they’re moving into those online forums.

Mike Papantonio: Right.

Farron Cousins: You know, where they couldn’t get in front of people’s eyeballs the same way they do on TV. So they buy spots and, and oil industry’s bad with this too, they buy ’em on The hill, the hill.com. They buy it in Politico. Politico is horrible.

Mike Papantonio: Oh, it.

Farron Cousins: With the corporate propaganda they push out.

Mike Papantonio: Just give us money. We’ll say whatever you wanna say.

Farron Cousins: And now this new one, Semafor, which I’ve used them as a source. They’ve put out some good stuff. And, and exactly. Pfizer understands, uhoh, they’re talking about pharmaceutical stuff. We’ve gotta put a stop to it. We’ve gotta buy them off.

Mike Papantonio: Yeah. I, I wouldn’t use that as a source.

Farron Cousins: Oh, not anymore.

Mike Papantonio: I literally would not use it as a source.

Farron Cousins: Absolutely not anymore.

Mike Papantonio: I wonder about any of these other sources that are doing this because they, all they’re doing is they’re getting a package. Would you do this story? Here’s, we filmed it for you. We have the witnesses, we have whatever. Just put it up. Everything’s gonna be okay. Now, the problem as you’re talking about is it moves into social media. What ends up happening? Those stories are throttled up. Okay. Our story about this will be throttled back. When you’re watching this segment don’t be surprised if a drug company comes on right before our segment. Every time we do a story about the, NextEra, for example, the, the energy supply company. They’re right before we start hammering them. You know, so, I mean, you know, social media in another year, you’re not even gonna recognize it, man. You’re not even gonna recognize it because they’re just, they’re just being bought up the same way corporate media’s been bought up.

Farron Cousins: Right. And it’s just that the corporations are a little bit behind where they were with corporate media and now that they see the corporate media’s dying, you got people dropping satellite TV, left and right.

Mike Papantonio: Cutting cables, man.

Farron Cousins: Exactly. So they’re like, okay, we gotta move into this online. We gotta be on Twitter, we gotta be on Facebook. We’ve gotta buy the actual website coverage. And that’s what they’re doing.

Mike Papantonio: You know, Farron, I covered, I looked at one of your stories the other day. You were doing, it was, it was something to do with something Trump had done and it was a powerful story. But then off to the side of it, there were stories completely unrelated to anything you were doing. Okay.

Farron Cousins: Yeah.

Mike Papantonio: You know, there were supposed to be, those stories over the right of the page are supposed to be somehow connected to the topic. MSNBC comes up talking about some nonsense story probably that’s been fed to ’em by Pfizer. CNN, just look down the list. There are not independent sources. Do you, do, are you gonna see Sam Seder? You gonna see David Pakman? Are you gonna see any of these, any of these sources that are independent media anymore? Because corporate media’s coming in, they’ve destroyed corporate television. Now they’re coming in to destroy corporate, you know, corporate media.

Farron Cousins: And, and they’re making huge head, headway with it too. I mean, across the board on the, you know, progressive side of the independent media, hosts out there on YouTube are getting hammered by this. And most of it has to do with what you’re talking about. They’re no longer showing up in that suggested feed. You know, oh, because you like David Pakman, we should show you a bunch of David Pakman or similar videos, but instead we’re gonna send you to ABC.

Mike Papantonio: Yeah.

Farron Cousins: NBC, Fox, whatever it is.

Mike Papantonio: We, were, you know what people don’t understand about what this station does. We, we’ll get these things, they’ll get mad about me doing a story on something and, you know, call me a right-winger or say that you’re a crazy lefter. And so we’re unsubscribing. They don’t understand that doesn’t affect us because the way, the way that our money comes in. Has nothing to do with it. But these other, these other folks that are relying on those advertising dollars coming in, it’s a big deal.

Farron Cousins: Yeah.

Mike Papantonio: Especially when you’ve got, when you’ve got somebody at the wheel like Twitter or Facebook that’s throttling them back to create more space for MSNBC and CNN.

Farron Cousins: Yeah.

Mike Papantonio: That’s the problem.

Julian Assange is still facing extradition and charges of violating the Espionage Act for exposing the US military’s war crimes. You know, this story has always bothered me so badly because, you know, the people love to, he’s a criminal. He did these terrible things. He raped a girl, which proved to be completely nonsense.

Farron Cousins: Yeah.

Mike Papantonio: That was years ago and they said no. No, he didn’t. As a matter of fact, it was, that was created by the spook industry. The spook industry created that story to discredit him. Pick this up and how dangerous the Espionage Act is, and how if they use it against him, we’re in big trouble.

Farron Cousins: Yeah. We are. Listen, you know, people love him or hate him. It doesn’t matter your personal feelings about him at all. What we’re talking about here is journalism itself at risk. And Julian Assange is, is currently facing extradition to the United States. They want to charge him under the Espionage Act, which could put him in prison forever until he, till he dies. And the Espionage Act is not supposed to be for whistleblowers exposing problems with our own US military.

Mike Papantonio: But that’s a hundred percent of what they’re doing with it.

Farron Cousins: Yes, it is. And that’s, that’s what we’re hearing from past whistleblowers. Daniel Ellsberg.

Mike Papantonio: Yeah.

Farron Cousins: Has now had to come out. Noam Chomsky is coming out and they are sounding the alarm bells about what could happen, should Assange come over here and be convicted, because that is going to be the death blow for what’s left of journalism in this country.

Mike Papantonio: Howard Zinn was talking about this his entire career. He said, this is getting ready to happen. He even described what the legislation would look like. It looked like the Espionage Act. Now let’s talk about these horrible things he did. First, he, he disclosed that the feds were spying on US citizens. That’s one of the bad things he did. The other thing he did is he was the first to disclose that, that dozens of purely dirty tricks by the US were being pulled off all around the globe and he pointed ’em out. He said, this is what happened in this country. This is what happened in this country. Here are the people that were responsible. That’s another terrible thing he did. The other thing he did is he was the first to disclose the remarkable impact that the feds were having on controlling the media. You know, so, so the media attacked him. They didn’t like that. That, that’s terrible. How dare you do that. He was first to disclose the indiscriminate use of drone bombs that were killing civilians.

Farron Cousins: Yeah.

Mike Papantonio: God, what a criminal he is. You know, let’s put him in prison. He was the first to disclose the details about George Bush and Dick Cheney and how they lied and hustled us into the Iraq War. Sounds like a criminal to me, doesn’t he? I can’t even get my arms around it. And Biden comes out and says, you know, one of the first thing he, you know, Biden’s big thing, this is a quote from him. Our freedom is dependent on free un, unregulated information flowing through the press. Right?

Farron Cousins: Yeah. And, and they still, they will not drop the charges. They want him to come and stand trial. And the charges were actually brought by the Trump administration. The Trump DOJ after, you know, Trump had kind of made it seem like he wasn’t gonna do anything. You know, we were gonna forgive him or whatever. And then nope, they move forward full steam ahead. Biden has not reversed that course at all. And again, we are not talking about this man releasing, oh, here’s all these secrets the United States has.

Mike Papantonio: These are the things I’m talking, this is what he released.

Farron Cousins: Exactly. He’s, he’s talking about here are some war crimes that we’ve committed.

Mike Papantonio: Yeah.

Farron Cousins: Here are some other atrocities that our government is committing by manipulating the media.

Mike Papantonio: Yeah.

Farron Cousins: You know, these are things the public needs to know about. 20, well, not 20, 40 years ago he’d have been a hero, much like Daniel Ellsberg, but now public enemy number one for both the right and the left, depending on where you are that day. But this is an attack on journalism itself.

Mike Papantonio: It is. And you know, the problem, Farron, you and I talk about the this all the time. If, if investigative journalism is dead, which it is, tell me last time you saw a CNN investigative report that meant anything. That wasn’t driven by corporate. It’s dead. I mean, it, it, it’s, you can’t find investigative journalism unless you look at independent media like the sources that we rely on. So it’s dead. The Espionage Act doesn’t, would’ve had Daniel Ellsberg in prison to this day. He’d still be in prison. We would never know that, that Richard Nixon was bombing Cambodia. Completely contrary to what his, what he should have been doing. We would’ve never known the truth about what was happening in Vietnam. We would’ve never known that that whole thing was based on absolute lies. Daniel Ellsberg is the person that put that out there. Under the, under this act, he would be in prison right now to this day.

Farron Cousins: Exactly. And that’s what we have to be concerned about. I mean, hell even, you know, Bernstein and Woodward, maybe they would’ve been in prison too for exposing Watergate at this point.

Mike Papantonio: Think about it.

Farron Cousins: Because we’re not, it’s not just that journalism is dead. It’s that the, the feds are trying to make it criminal.

Mike Papantonio: Yeah.

Farron Cousins: That’s what it is.

Mike Papantonio: But why isn’t the New York Times, why aren’t they locking up the New York Times of the Washington Post? They’re disclosing this information. You know, they’re, they’re saying, yeah, well we’re gonna publish this.

Farron Cousins: Yeah.

Mike Papantonio: Why aren’t they part of the problem, you see? But it’s easier to go after this guy and, you know, make these stories about how what a terror, the movie they made about him was just, it was atrocious. And then you find out, well, who funded the movie? Well go, go follow that story. We ought to do a story on that. Tell the whole story about Ellsberg. But you know, the point is, it’s Kafka. Franz Kafka had it right in his, he wrote a great book called The Trial. Everybody should read it. I know you’ve read it. You’re probably one of the most read political commentators I know. But everybody needs to understand that’s what’s happening here. It’s, it’s Kafka as, as we’re watching this unfold, and nobody seems to give a.

Even Nancy Pelosi thinks that President Biden’s age is gonna be a huge factor in 2024. She, look, this is a bigger story than her statement about Biden. You get that. I mean, she comes out and says, well, in her grandma, great grandma kind of passive aggressive way, she’s master at the passive aggressive great grandma. She comes out and says, well, you know, I’m 82. He’s 80. Yeah, it could be a factor. And then she follow, she follows it up with this statement, well, I think there are other great candidates out there. I mean, come on. And then now you see all this thing about the, the, the document stories that are coming. Democrats are driving that story. I mean, they’re the ones that are pushing the story because they want to get rid of the crazy old man.

Farron Cousins: You know, it, it’s funny you picked up on that exact same quote, because to me that’s the story. It’s not just her saying like, is age a positive? No, it’s not for him. But then the, I think we have other great candidates when the time comes. So she is already, you know, shifting into that like, oh, I’ll support him if he runs. But there’s a lot of good other people over here. And the problem is actually no, no. If we had all of those good other candidates you’re talking about.

Mike Papantonio: Where are they?

Farron Cousins: We wouldn’t be having a conversation about him maybe running in 2024. And I think that, that also weighs heavily on his mind because he understands, I don’t even think he wants to do the second term.

Mike Papantonio: No. I mean, the guy, look.

Farron Cousins: But he’s looking around at his own party and saying, where, where are you, good candidates?

Mike Papantonio: They’re gonna put, they’re gonna, they’re gonna put him back. Well, there are some good candidates. Tell, tell me your.

Farron Cousins: Well, well, they are.

Mike Papantonio: I mean, there’s some good candidates.

Farron Cousins: You’ve got Katie Porter.

Mike Papantonio: Katie Porter.

Farron Cousins: But I don’t think she’s, I don’t think she’s there yet.

Mike Papantonio: She’s not ready. But what a great candidate, man.

Farron Cousins: But 2028, a hundred percent.

Mike Papantonio: Ro Khanna, I mean, you know.

Farron Cousins: Ro Khanna is great.

Mike Papantonio: We got some great people out there.

Farron Cousins: Merkley is good.

Mike Papantonio: Yeah.

Farron Cousins: But they.

Mike Papantonio: Okay.

Farron Cousins: They won’t challenge him, unfortunately.

Mike Papantonio: They’re gonna put him down in the basement again. Okay. They’re gonna put him down. But the old man in the basement, if he runs again and the, and, and let him run a campaign from there. But the truth is that the most of these leaks of these stories, I mean, it’s very clear. It’s coming from the inside of the Democratic elites. They know this. They don’t want him to run again. They, they, they’ve seen him. Think back with Obama. Do you remember when I was waiting for Obama to endorse him? Do you know he never did. He never endorsed him. At some, I guess when it came right down to the end. But when in the primaries, you know, I, he just sat silent.

Farron Cousins: Yeah.

Mike Papantonio: Because he knows the guy’s, you know, not right in a lot of ways.

Farron Cousins: Right. I mean, you know, being his vice president for eight years, you would’ve thought as soon as Biden announced, Obama would’ve been like, yep. That’s, that’s the guy folks. He’s, he’s my guy. We’re gonna do this again.

Mike Papantonio: Yeah.

Farron Cousins: And the fact that he didn’t, he waited so long before even saying anything about it. And the only reason he did was to, you know, kind of kneecap Bernie Sanders campaign.

Mike Papantonio: Right, right.

Farron Cousins: Because he had the wind at his back. But even Bernie Sanders, who would’ve been an amazing president.

Mike Papantonio: Oh, he would’ve been great.

Farron Cousins: He’s, he’s got that same age factor going.

Mike Papantonio: Yeah.

Farron Cousins: Although he’s, he doesn’t look like he’s missed a step in 40 years.

Mike Papantonio: Yeah. But you can’t recycle.

Farron Cousins: But you can’t.

Mike Papantonio: You’re not gonna be able to recycle.

Farron Cousins: Right.

Mike Papantonio: Which is unfortunate. He could have done so much good in these last, in these last four years. So, anyway, Farron, thank you for joining me. Okay.

Farron Cousins: Thank you.

Mike Papantonio: Appreciate it. That’s all for this week. But all of these segments are gonna be available this coming week right here on this channel. And you can follow us at Twitter @AmericasLawyer. I’m Mike Papantonio and this has been America’s Lawyer where every week, we tell you the stories that corporate media won’t tell you because their advertisers don’t allow for it and their political connections are so tribal that that does not permit them to tell the story. We’ll see you next time.